Background

"Movement lawyer, organizer, advocate. That is how Ahmad Abuznaid describes himself. Whether he is helping organize a historic 31 day sit-in in the Governor of Florida’s Office, presenting before the United Nations Human Rights Committee in Geneva, working as Legal and Policy Director for Dream Defenders, or leading a delegation of Black Lives Matter activists to Palestine, Abuznaid, who has been a lawyer for five years, is all about justice.

Ahmad Abuznaid was born in East Jerusalem, Palestine. His father was a professor at Hebron University and later a diplomat who dedicated his life to the Palestinian cause. As a one year old his family moved to the US. His father had US citizenship, Ahmad and his mother received citizenship later. He returned to Palestine as a 7 year old to live there for five more years. ““As a seven-year-old boy being strip searched next to your mother… that obviously has a lasting effect,” he remembers. “Living in the occupied territories for a few years, I experienced harassment, strip searches, checkpoints and curfews that would extend for weeks. Like millions of Palestinians across the world, I am denied my legal right to return to my homeland by the settler colonial state of Israel. The Apartheid system they have enacted makes it possible for a Jewish child born today in Alaska to have greater rights in historic Palestine than me and my entire family, simply because we do not subscribe to Judaism.”

Returning to Florida he “started hanging out with all the Black and Latino kids. Because of my experience in Palestine, the blinders had been taken off of my eyes. I began to recognize the existence of US systems of injustice which disproportionately affected black, brown, and poor people. It was very easy for me to see parallels in different oppressions. Maybe because of what these systems have done to us, I felt a similar spirit of resistance.”[1]

Early Organizing

"In college Abuznaid started organizing. In 2006, while he was attending Florida State University, 14 year old Martin Lee Anderson was murdered in a state-run boot camp youth detention facility in Panama CityFlorida. Though law enforcement said Anderson died of sickle cell anemia, surveillance tapes came to light showing he collapsed during mandatory exercise and five officers kneed the dying youth and hit him trying to force him to continue to run.

"Abuznaid, who was student body vice president at Florida State University, Tallahassee, joined FSU Senate President Gabriel Pendas, Florida A&M University student body vice president Umi Selah (formerly known as Philip Agnew) and many other student leaders including some from Tallahassee Community College to organize a two day sit-in taking over the office of Florida Governor Jeb Bush. They called themselves the Student Coalition for Justice. “We took over the state capitol and organized a year of campaigns to get justice for Martin Lee, his family, and for accountability of those involved.” Under considerable pressure, Florida shut down the juvenile boot camps. “This group gave me the feeling of organizing and winning by affecting people’s lives. It was addicting.”

Law School

"Abuznaid went to law school at Florida Coastal in Jacksonville. “I knew I wanted to be a lawyer way back in Palestine as a young child. I imagined that being armed with knowledge of the law and its institutions would mean that I could fight back against the colonization of my homeland and the abuse of my family, my people. When I returned to the US I kept that mindset and so for high school I enrolled into a Pre-Law magnet program for high school. I kept focused on that goal until completion in 2011 when I graduated from Law School and passed the Florida Bar.”

"One of the highlights of law school was his work in the immigration clinic where he help Iraqi refugees and others seeking to be accepted into the US. Another was the opportunity he received to serve 300 hours of pro bono work in an internship with the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands. While some law school faculty members were really helpful and were invested in his future, he could tell he was going down a different path from many of his classmates. While he saw the legal system as inherently flawed, it was clear to him that others in his class really wanted to uphold the system as is.[3]

Dream Defenders

"Agnew was the student body vice president at Florida A&M University when 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson was beaten to death at a Florida boot camp in 2006. At the time, Agnew was more interested in parties than protests. But when he realized that Martin Lee Anderson was the same age as his own little brother, Agnew joined student-led efforts to demonstrate at the Capitol.

"That's when he got to know Gabriel Pendas and Ahmad Abuznaid, like-minded student leaders at Florida State University.

"The three helped organize a 33-hour sit-in of then Gov. Jeb Bush's office. The demonstration received national coverage, and helped prompt the closing of the boot camp and the resignation of the state's top law enforcement official.

"It was a formative experience for the three young men. Pendas, who grew up in Miami, abandoned his plans to become a physicist and pursued a career in community organizing.

"Agnew, the son of a Chicago preacher, said he, too, found his calling.

"I spoke in front of 5,000 people," he recalled. "I literally opened my mouth and my father came out. It was like, this is what I was meant to do."

"The three friends "became brothers that night," Pendas said.

"After college, however, they lost touch. Pendas moved to New York to work as a community organizer in the Bronx. Abuznaid graduated from law school and was living with his father in Amsterdam.

"Agnew was working a pharmaceutical sales rep in Charlotte.

"I hated my job," he said. "I felt horrible about what I was doing."

When the Occupy movement took hold in September 2011, Agnew began to agitate. Five months later, Zimmerman shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in a gated-community in Sanford.

Agnew got on the phone with Pendas, Abuznaid and the others who had taken part in the 2006 protest. They planned a 40-person march from Daytona to Sanford in April 2012. When the group arrived, six members blocked the door to the Sanford Police Department headquarters to protest the fact that Zimmerman had not yet been arrested.

"It was a continuation of our work with Martin Lee Anderson," Pendas said. "Another young man of color had been killed. We needed to take a stand."

"It was the perfect framework," Pendas said. "Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream. Millions of Latino students have a dream." The latter is a reference to the fight in Congress undocumented immigrant children are waging to gain legal status through the DREAM Act.

The march turned out to be just the beginning. A handful of current FAMU and Florida State students had become involved in the Dream Defenders through Facebook and Twitter. And the young activists were hungry for next steps.

That's when the idea really coalesced. The Dream Defenders would do more than just advocate for social justice causes. They would develop the next generation of student leaders.

Agnew, Abuznaid and Pendas moved into a house in Miami Lakes — it was later nicknamed the "Dream House" — and began to develop the organization.

The Dream Defenders now has chapters on nine college campuses in Florida. More than 100 student members have campaigned to end prison privatization, racial profiling and zero tolerance policies in schools.

"They make the decisions on what kind of campaigns they want to run and we help them facilitate it," said Abuznaid, who serves as the group's legal and policy director. "The leadership is shared between us and the students."

The organization survives on private donations and contributions from local unions. Agnew receives a small salary as executive director, but Abuznaid, Pendas and the other staffers work for free. They hope to continue expanding and eventually, have a fully funded staff that receives health benefits.[5]

Legal comrades

Palestine

Abuznaid has returned to Palestine many times. In 2015 he co-organized a trip to Palestine for black journalists, artists, organizers from Ferguson Missouri, Black Lives Matter, Hands Up United, Justice League NYC, and Black Youth Project 100 in order to connect and build relationships between people on the ground leading fights for liberation. “In the spirit of Malcolm X, Angela Davis, Stokely Carmichael and many others, we thought the connections between the African American leadership of the movement in the US and those on the ground in Palestine needed to be reestablished and fortified.” He also organized another trip to Palestine in 2016 which connected Black Lives Matter activists, Puente Arizona, PICO National Network and others with grassroots organizations and Palestinian civil rights activists in Ramallah, Jerusalem and Haifa to explore their parallel fights.[7]

On a historic trip to Palestine, freedom fighters from Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, New York, Ferguson, and Atlanta were able to witness firsthand the effects of Israeli apartheid and occupation, and to learn from the people who are actively resisting on the front lines.
In Nazareth, the delegates decided to do a solidarity demonstration as a call for support of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign that was called for by Palestinian civil society in 2005.

Call for Justice

Call for Justice: Joint Letter on American Muslim Solidarity Against Police Brutality, January 26, 2015;

We are contacting you on behalf of the Muslim Anti-Racism Collaborative (MuslimARC)(1) and Muslims for Ferguson(2) to ask for your solidarity in the struggle and call for justice concerning the tragic and unnecessary police and federal law enforcement killings of Black men, women, and children in the United States.

From the time of our Noble Prophet ﷺ‎, anti-Black and anti-African racism has plagued Muslim societies and communities. The first martyr in the early days of Islam was Sumayyah (RA), who had black skin and was a victim of violence at the hands of the governing authorities of Makkah. Other companions with black skin, such as Ammar bin Yassir (RA) and Bilal (RA), were also victims of ridicule and torture by the same authorities. State violence against marginalized communities is not a new development. History has proven time and again that Muslims are not immune to these forms of oppression.

Indeed, these oppressive behaviors and practices go against the messages that are at the heart of our Holy Qur’an and Prophetic traditions.

Sarsour connection

"Education in The Movement"

We are the sons and daughters of slaves and farm-workers. We are Dreamers and the products of a generation that had a Dream. We are 'We Shall Overcome' and 'Si se puede!' We are Phoenix and Selma, the Freedom Rides & the Trail of Dreams, Suffrage & Solidarity.

Come learn about the history of educational justice in St. Petersburg, the civil rights legend Enoch Davis, the local educational crisis in the black community, and the work of the Dream Defenders across the state.

Bullard’s trip is unusual in that it joins a lawmaker from a district with a substantial Jewish population – the Democrat represents a chunk of Miami-Dade country – with a cause, BDS, considered anathema for most of the mainstream Jewish community.

On June 3 2016, Bullard spoke at an event that explicitly linked the Black Lives Matter movement to the Palestinian cause titled “Struggles for Liberation: Injustice from Ferguson to Palestine.” Sabeel, a Christian group that endorses BDS, sponsored the event.

“As an African-American born to a mom who lived through Jim Crow and some of those things, people born in a certain place should be afforded political rights,” Bullard said Tuesday in an interview with JTA, explaining why he accepted the invitation to attend the Dream Defenders tour. “People should not be viewed in two different lights.”

His tour group met with Omar Barghouti, a founder of the BDS movement, among others. Pro-Israel groups object that BDS not only singles out Israel, but that it supports a single binational state — essentially a denial of Israel’s right to exist as a sovereign Jewish state.

Bullard said he did not know until after the West Bank trip that its tour guide, Mahmoud Jeddah, was affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. During the same trip Didier Ortiz, a Green Party candidate for the Fort Lauderdale City Council, posted on Instagram a photo of Jeddah and noted his PFLP affiliation. (Ortiz also said in another Instagram posting from the trip, from a checkpoint in Hebron, that “Zionism must be eradicated.”)

Bullard told JTA that he joined the Dream Defenders trip seeking facts, and was ready to engage with Jewish and pro-Israel groups as part of his constituency outreach, as well as travel to Israel with a pro-Israel group.

“If a pro-Jewish organization said if you want to go to Israel, I’d go,” he said. “I’m open to talk to anybody about my experience of what I saw.”

Bullard said he was alarmed by the vitriol he encountered subsequent to the trip.

“I want to be a public servant, open-minded,” he said.

Bullard said he traveled with Dream Defenders in his quest to learn more about people suffering from discrimination; he had once traveled to Morocco with the State Department for similar reasons.

“For people who are indigenous to an area, they deserve rights and protections they are not afforded,” Bullard said, referring both to Palestinians and Israeli Arabs.

“The reality is a person born of Palestinian heritage in Nazareth does not have the same rights as someone born of Jewish heritage,” he said.

Bullard said he did not have a position on a two-state or one-state outcome, preferring to focus instead on enfranchising the marginalized.

“As an elected official,” he said, “I’m not in a position to advocate against a two-state or one-state solution.”[13]

Dwight Bullard was one of 14 Latinx and Black activists, artists, ministers, students and educators who in May traveled throughout the West Bank to build connections with Palestinian organizers and see the effects of Israeli land control. The trip was the second in two years organized by the Dream Defenders and participants came from Black Lives Matter Toronto, BYP 100, Puente Arizona, [PICO National Network] and other groups focused on racial justice.

2016 delegates

The trip, which took place from May 10th to 20th, dovetailed with the 68th commemoration of the Nakba, the displacement of roughly 75 percent of Palestinians during Israel’s founding in May 1948. In the West Bank the group met with artists, youth organizers and refugees living under military occupation and Israeli settlement. In East Jerusalem, they heard from the African Palestinian community and families facing eviction. Within Israel, they met with Palestinian civil rights activists and marched with Bedouin Palestinians in the Naqab Desert facing the demolition of their villages.[14]

Revolutionary Strategies to Beat the Rising Right Wing

What's the nature of this right-wing threat? What has this election cycle changed about the political terrain we're fighting on? How do we need to prepare for whats coming after the election? Hear about these crucial questions from our panel of top political strategists, including Nelini Stamp, Bill Fletcher, Jr., Linda Burnham, and Sendolo Diaminah.

Cuba connection

Emgage Action rally

Politicians and activists rallied Muslim Americans in Dearborn on July 29 2018 to encourage voter participation in the upcoming Aug. 7 primary election and to register new voters for the November ballot.

Held outside the Ford Community and Performing Arts Center, there was a festive atmosphere, with bouncy houses for children, and food vendors to tempt tastes, but there was a serious message to impart: In an election pivotal to Muslim Americans candidates and voters, every vote will count, in the primary and general election, and eligible citizens should register and learn about the process and ballot.

“What we’re trying to do is energize our community, get them out to the polls, because we have a lot of great candidates right now,” Al-Hanooti said. “Not only because they are Muslim, but because they are extremely qualified and viable candidates. So this is our time, and we are taking full advantage and mobilizing.”

Gubernatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed and political activist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who spoke at the rally, were the reason many attended, but for Majeda Tafish, 40, of Dearborn, who became a naturalized citizen 10 years ago, it was a chance to take the first step to register to vote.

In the past, Tafish said, the lists of candidates and the issues seemed daunting to her.

“I want to vote, to have a voice,” she said. “Wherever I go, they keep saying, ‘Vote, vote,’ but I see a big list and I don’t know any of them. They give me a brochure that says nice things about them, but I don’t know who to believe.”

Abdul El-Sayed called for the Muslim voting community to raise its voices, vote and encourage others to vote in the primary and general election.

“When you look at who we are right now, we are so much better,” he said. “That is the opportunity in front of us on Aug. 7. Let’s not lose that opportunity because we, together, are doing the work of democracy. Now let’s go get it.”[19]